Following the massive and game-changing success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, the slasher subgenre would go on to dominate horror throughout the 1980s. Many of them were cheap and nasty efforts designed solely to profit from the newfound craze, but several titles went on to become classics in their own right, with Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street one of the most notable.
Alongside Halloween‘s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees, Nightmare‘s Freddy Krueger rounded out the ‘Big Three’ of the slasher phenomenon. The difference between the latter and his contemporaries, though, was that Freddy was a charismatic presence with a dark and twisted sense of humor, brought to iconic life by Robert Englund.
Englund lent his particular charms to the first seven installments and crossover Freddy vs. Jason, but he was replaced by Jackie Earle Haley for the 2010 remake, which was largely panned by critics and made a huge mistake in treating the franchise’s most famous figure with a completely straight face, neutering much of his appeal in the process.
However, insider Daniel Richtman reports that the next remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street will look to balance horror with some more light-hearted moments, as it’s said to be very scary but also have a sense of humor like the original. There’s not much more made available other than that by the tipster, and there are no projects officially in development that we know of, but Craven’s estate has actively been inviting pitches since the rights to the property reverted back to them in 2019.
It’s only a matter of time before it happens, then, and when A Nightmare on Elm Street does inevitably return to our screens, it’s a lot more likely that it’ll hew much closer to Craven’s original template than the misguided remake.
